Difference Between Disclaimer And Privacy Policy & How to Create Them

Does it feel confusing for you as a site owner to differentiate between disclaimer and privacy policy?

If the answer is YES, this article is for you. 

Both the disclaimer and privacy policy pages play a crucial part by ensuring legal protection against any unexpected claim. They are written statements through which your site interacts with your site users and visitors. Besides, both of them  work as a ‘deed of transparency’ between your site and its users.

Though you use disclaimer and privacy policy as a legal safeguard for your site. There are some significant differences between them. I hope getting a transparent idea about their differences will help you make the right decision about how and when to use them on your site.

Moreover, we will also get a complete idea on how to create both disclaimer and privacy policy in this blog post. Let’s get the ball rolling!    

What is a Privacy Policy?

A privacy policy is a detailed statement that depicts how your website collects, uses, stores and transmits the personal and sensitive information of the users and visitors. It works as a ‘deed of trust’ between your website and its users and visitors. Even, in some cases having a privacy policy is a mandatory requirement by law. Your site will stay on the safe side if you have a privacy policy statement because you may intentionally or unintentionally collect users’ personal and sensitive data.

Moreover, a privacy policy works as a safeguard for your website against any legal claim from users. Your potential users and visitors feel more secure when they visit your site. Besides, to operate your website in regions like European Union-based countries, you must have a privacy policy statement for your website that is GDPR compliant. Otherwise, you may face a lawsuit for violating their privacy laws. 

What is a Disclaimer?

On the other hand, disclaimer is a statement that announces it won’t take any responsibility or liability if the users and visitors use the resources and information your website displays or shares. One thing to note is that disclaimer isn’t a mandatory statement like a privacy policy. There is no legal obligation for you whether you will display a disclaimer on your website or not. Rather, it works as a reminder for the users to announce that your site is free from liabilities. 

You can design your disclaimer statement based on the type of your website. For instance, If your site contents are related to physical and mental fitness and describe how you can improve them, then you should display a ‘Medical Disclaimer’ on your site. It will help the visitors to understand that your site won’t be responsible at all if anything bad occurs in visitors’ health  after using the information your site provides. Usually, disclaimer doesn’t have any specific classification. But most common and widely used disclaimers are :

• Copyright Disclaimer
• Warranty Disclaimer
• Affiliate Disclaimer
• Third-party Disclaimer
• Limitations of Liability Disclaimer
• Medical Disclaimer
• Return Policy Disclaimer

Difference between Disclaimer and Privacy Policy for Your Website

From the discussion right above, it’s clear that both disclaimer and privacy policy work as a safeguard for your website against any lawsuit or unwanted situations that may destroy your site’s transparency. Despite these, you may find some basic differences between them.

1. Definition based difference

A privacy policy is a statement about how your website collects, uses, manages, stores, and transmits the personal and sensitive information of your site’s users and visitors. 

Whereas, a disclaimer is a formal declaration that announces your website won’t take the legal liability or responsibility of any information, mistake, error, or virus that visitors or users may face while they visit your website.

2. Legal commitment

If your website uses the personal and sensitive data of users for different purposes, then it’s recognized by the law to use a privacy policy statement so that you can inform the users about the usage of their data for your site’s purposes. So, It’s a legal obligation to display a privacy policy statement on your website.

In terms of the disclaimer, it’s totally up to you whether you will display a disclaimer statement on your site or not. There is no legal obligation that may force you to display a disclaimer statement for your site visitors. But to be on the safe side, you can use this statement to avoid any kind of liability of your site.

3. Difference in objectives

The main objective of a disclaimer statement is to inform your site users and visitors that your site won’t take any responsibility or liability for the information displayed on your site. They will be responsible to themselves if any harm occurs.  

On the other hand, a privacy policy informs your visitors and users through a descriptive announcement about how your site will use their personal and purely sensitive information for different purposes. So, a privacy policy is like ensuring your users and visitors about the usage of their data on your site. 

4. Management of liabilities

A privacy policy lets you give a clear idea among your site visitors about what you do with the data you collect from them. If they raise any claim against your site about the misuse of their given data, then the privacy policy page will prove that you have already informed users about how your site will use their given data. Thus, it helps your site to be free from any kind of liabilities about users’ data.

A disclaimer is a kind of announcement from your site that states your site won’t take the responsibility for the information and resources provided on your site. It warns that users can utilize the information at their own risk. Besides, a disclaimer protects your site from any legal liability if the information isn’t up-to-date, completely accurate, and biased. 

5. Legal requirement

Having a well-defined privacy policy works as a legal requirement if you want to operate your website in countries like the USA, Canada, Argentina, the countries included in the European Union region, etc. Operating a website without a privacy policy is considered a crime in these countries. Hence, it’s important to have a privacy policy for your site’s legal safety. 

On the other hand, a disclaimer isn’t a mandatory legal requirement. That’s why It’s totally up to you whether you want to add a disclaimer for your site or not.

How to Create Disclaimer and Privacy Policy for Your Website

Creating disclaimer and privacy policy statement for your website is like a piece of cake if you take the advantage of using a plugin for your website. There are numerous plugins in the market that are specially designed to create legal pages like a disclaimer and privacy policy. Depending on your choice, you can take any of them to serve your purposes.

Create a privacy policy for your website  

To create a privacy policy easily for your website, you can choose Legal Pages as it comes in handy to design a privacy policy page based on your needs. Now, we are going to show you a step-by-step guide on how to create a privacy policy statement for your website.

Step 1: Install and activate ‘Legal Pages’ plugin on your site

To proceed further, at first make sure you have installed WordPress as the dedicated Content Management System (CMS). Now, move on to the Dashboard and then, click on Plugins➤Add New. You have landed on the ‘WordPress Plugin Repository’. 

Write the name ‘Legal Pages’ in the Search Plugins box. When you hit the ‘Enter’ button, the Legal Pages plugin will appear in the search result. After that, click on Install Now to activate the plugin.

Once you have installed the plugin successfully, click on Activate to start off the plugin on your site.

Step 2: Explore the plugin

Let’s explore the ‘Legal Pages’ plugin. First, click on the Settings menu and it offers two tabs within it: General Information and Miscellaneous Settings.

Step 3: Add various information in ‘General Information’ tab

The General Information tab includes two sections: General Information and Social Information

Next, you need to add information about yourself and your website in the ‘General Information’ tab. Remember, the information you provide in this part can be useful if you select the ready-made templates to create your preferred legal page.

Similarly, you can provide the different social media platforms URL addresses for your site in ‘Social Information’. Finally, click on the Save button to record the provided data. Besides, there are options to Reset Fields and Reset Saved Data from here.

Next, it’s time to work with the Miscellaneous tab. There are two options available here. In the first option, you can tick the box if you don’t want to display legal pages in the search result. By clicking the second option, you can delete the plugin’s data on uninstall. Lastly, click on the Save button to save all the changes you have made.

Step 4: Create a new privacy policy page by using a privacy policy template

You can add a new privacy policy page by clicking on Add New Legal Page that appears under the ‘Legal Pages’ menu in the ‘Admin Dashboard’. Once you have landed on the ‘Add New Legal Page’, you can choose a template named Privacy Policy from Choose a Template that appears on the right side of the page. 

It’s important to note that, when you click on the ‘Privacy Policy’ template, then the Title and Paragraph part of the new page will automatically be filled with the new ‘Privacy Policy’ template’s text. Lastly, click on Save Page to save the changes you have made earlier.

Next, to find out the recently created privacy policy page, click on the All Legal Pages tab under the ‘Legal Pages’ menu in your WordPress dashboard Admin Menu. You will find your recently created Privacy Policy page here. If you want to include a new legal page, click on Add New Legal Page. 

Besides, to display the newly created ‘Privacy Policy’ page, copy its Shortcode and paste it to any page or post you want. Moreover, in Action, you can customize the privacy policy page like view, edit or move to trash.

So, you have effortlessly created a privacy policy page for your website with the ‘Legal Pages’ plugin.

Create a disclaimer for your website  

Creating a disclaimer page for your website almost functions the same way as creating a privacy policy page. The core difference is you can create a ‘Privacy Policy page with ‘Legal Pages’ plugin which is a free plugin but you won’t find the legal page template named ‘Disclaimer’ here. This template is only available on ‘Legal Pages Pro’.  

Hope you have purchased this plugin and activated it on your WordPress-based site. Both the general description of the plugin and adding various information in the General Information parts are the same as Step 2 and Step 3 of creating a privacy policy page. So, we won’t repeat these two steps and move on to the later parts.

Create a disclaimer page by using a disclaimer template

To create a disclaimer page, hover over ‘Legal Pages’ in the WordPress Admin Dashboard. Next, click on Add New Legal Page. You see the list of templates based on your site type. You can select the type of your site by selecting Show Template Type. Currently, all types of templates are shown because the default Show Template Type has been selected as All types of Sites. 

Next, select Disclaimer from the templates list from the right side of the page. Both the Title and Paragraph sections will be filled automatically with the Title and body text of this template. Finally, click on Save Page to save the ‘Disclaimer’ template page on your site. 

Now, if you search where your recently created ‘Disclaimer’ page has been stored, click on the All Legal Pages tab under the ‘Legal Pages’ menu located in the Dashboard Admin Menu. You will find out your recently created ‘Disclaimer’ page here. That’s how you can create and store a ‘Disclaimer’ page on your website. 

Wrapping Up

Despite having differences, both privacy disclaimer and privacy policy help your site get legal protection. That’s why you should use both of them to operate your site with transparency and accountability to your users and visitors. You can use both of them to provide your site with more clarity and transparency. 

Moreover, users and visitors will consider your site more credibly if you use both of them on your site. I hope this article helped you to distinguish between disclaimer and privacy policy in detail. If you want to share something on topic, please feel free to share your precious feedback in the comment section below.

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